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This fire-fighting sound system has various modes of operation. Above we see it being used against a particularly bad fried kale fire, utilizing it’s “Sarah Palin” mode. For larger fires there is a Dick Cheney mode, and a selection of Nickelback songs.

The first non-test flight of a reusable commercial spacecraft was a complete success as the SpaceX Dragon capsule launched, docked with the International Space Station and delivered cargo, and then returned to Earth.

A major new era in space exploration and human civilization has begun.

The world’s most respected scientist, Bill Nye The Science Guy, appears in a video called “Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children“. In the video Nye says “Your world just becomes fantastically complicated if you don’t believe in evolution”, and claims the United States is the main country where people deny the fact of evolution.

You can watch live on various sources at 10:31 pm Pacific time Sunday / 1:31 am Eastern time Monday. Well – not really because there’s no one there to point a camera at it – but you can see the look on the NASA guy’s faces when it craters.

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, looking more than slightly like a deer caught in Apple’s headlights, announces Microsoft’s soon-to-fail tablet entry, the Surface. Microsoft will manufacture millions of these, pour ungodly amounts of money into marketing and sales, and in the end will dump them into the Baltic Sea along with all those millions of copies of “Bob”.

Swedish researchers Peter Lindberg and Dennis Asberg are returning to the site of the mysterious “Baltic Anomaly”, a strange circular formation on the floor of the Baltic Sea that they discovered last year while searching for a WWI shipwreck. Speculation about the nature of the site ranges from an emerging volcano to a crashed UFO.

The launch of the SpaceX private spacecraft, scheduled to dock with the International Space Station, was called-off in its final seconds due to a problem with the rocket motor. SpaceX is NASA’s private enterprise answer to hitching rides on Russian spacecraft, which is not only embarrassing but scary.

Scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider announced they have discovered a new particle.

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN institute in Switzerland have announced the discovery of a new particle, though not the much sought-after Higgs boson – the fundamental particle that imparts mass.

“It’s even better” the team said. “The neutral Xi_b^star baryon is even more useful than the Higgs. The Higgs would merely lead to the ability to manipulate gravity, but this new particle is thought to be responsible for hair loss and male impotence! The benefits to mankind in controlling this particle are almost unlimited! It totally justifies the enormous cost of building the collider!

And artist's rendering of the newly detected planet around a distant star.

NASA scientists have revealed they have detected signals from a small blue planet around a distant star. The inhabitants of the planet call it Kolob, and call themselves Mormos. Other than this the signals have as yet been undecipherable.

Supporters of the "Stop Online Piracy Act", or SOPA, brought some heavy hitters before Congressional hearings into the need for the legislation. Particularly effective at convincing some recalcitrant Senators and Representatives was Mr. Joe S. Talin, a lobbyist for various media organizations, and a former official in the now-defunct Soviet Union.

Innocent voting machines like this one may be subject to hacking for as little as $26.00, as demonstrated by researchers.

Computer scientists have demonstrated several ways to hack electronic voting machines. “It’s easy and cheap, and you can control the machines by remote from miles away” said one anonymous hacker working for the Republican Party Voter Fraud Development Labs in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

“We’re going to sue!” cried another researcher from the Democrat Social Realignment Via Electronic Direct Action group based in San Quentin, California. “We pioneered this technique right after the Florida elections in 2000!”

The space shuttle Atlantis touched-down on a runway in Florida at 2:59 am Pacific time this morning – the last time one of the shuttle fleet will do so. The fleet flew for 30 years: the first launch of a shuttle into orbit took place April 12, 1981.

The U.S.S.R. launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to reach Earth orbit, on October 4, 1957, and it burned-up on re-entry on January 4, 1958. The first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, was launched on January 31, 1958. The word “aerospace” was supposedly coined on February 2. The U.S. Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on July 29, and NASA launched its first satellite, Pioneer 1, on October 11.

I was born on the last day of 1958. So, the U.S. space program and myself are about the same age. I was one of those kids that read science fiction stories about space travel. I followed the space program the way other kids followed baseball. I watched the first Apollo Moon landing on TV on July 20, 1969 (along with about 500 million other people). I watched the first shuttle launch on TV in a college classroom in ’81. And a few minutes ago I watched the last shuttle landing on TV – satellite TV.

Now I wonder – will I see U.S. astronauts go back into space in my lifetime?